Craving

This is silly.

I'm up to my neck in stuff that must be done.

And yet ... and yet ...

The craving will not leave me.  My head is bursting with games I want to play in and games I want to run.  These are some of my current yearnings.  They're in no particular order.  Most likely the prospect of running or playing in any of them is very slight, but you never know.  Don't ask, don't get.

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach
This one is a charming tale of academic possession.  Players are staff and students of a university.  All are prepared to use any means possible to get ahead.  If that means ingesting a demonic bug, so be it.  I love this whole notion.  I grew up in a highly academic family and spent a lot of my childhood at various cybernetics conferences.  Believe me, the Roach is mild compared to the real thing.  Also more fun.

Castle Falkenstein
And here we have a wondrous swashbuckling mix of steampunk and romantic heroism set in an alternate Europe.  As a passionate advocate of Anthony Hope and all his works, how can I not want to play this?

Chronica Feudalis
Ah, Chronica Feudalis - you bonkers re-imagining of life in a 12th century monastery where monks gather in the cellar to play covert games.  The book is a thing of joy.  Beautifully presented, elegantly written and with an interesting rules system.

Dogs in the Vineyard
From the fertile mind of Vincent Baker comes a West that Never Was.  In stark contrast to some of the others on this list, players roam the country bringing the Word to the unknowing and rooting out injustice.  Injustice leads to unrighteousness and pride and that way lies doom.  Think of it as "The Crucible" with added patchwork coats.

Everway
A Christmas present from my old friend Chris (find him over at Bladesharp).  This is a box of unalloyed crazy and is begging to either be played or incorporated into something else.  Possibly both.  I mentioned I have a Sigil passage coming up for one of my groups.  Maybe, just maybe.

Houses of the Blooded
John Wick's world is one I've wanted to play in ever since I first read about the Ven.  In common with a lot of these, the book itself is a beautiful thing.  Immersive, wonderfully illustrated and with a glorious level of dottiness with the annotations attached to the illustrations and the quotes from old Ven literature.  Also appealing is the notion that players must operate within this world and by the rules of this particular society in order to survive.

Mythic Russia
I found this at UK Games Con about three years ago.  Love at first sight.  I have a lot of Russian blood and a long-standing love of all things Slavic and this takes me right back to my childhood and my mum telling me Russian fairy stories she learned from her father.  "Once upon a time, east of the sun and west of the moon, there was a different place, but not too different ..."

Any takers?